Entanglement Bound: An Epic Space Opera Series (Entangled Universe Book 1) Page 14

  Of course, that left Cassie.

  Cassie cared about Clarity, in her naive childlike way, whether Clarity wanted the young starwhal to or not.

  Clarity wanted to give up on the entire universe and let it swallow itself. But she couldn't abandon Cassie until she knew the starwhal was safe. Cassie had trusted her when she was scared to leave the asteroid belt that had been her entire known world. Clarity needed to live up to her trust.

  Besides, her back was sore from sleeping on the floor, and her neck had a crick in it. She couldn't lie here anymore. She couldn't. She had to get up. She had to.

  Clarity ratcheted herself sideways until she was sitting, leaned against the wall of the ventricle room instead of just curled up on the floor. But instead of getting up—which she needed to do, she did—she unzipped her duffle bag and reached under the wadded-up smart-cloth of the spacesuit. She felt the knobbly surfaces and odd shapes until she recognized the one she was looking for. Clarity pulled out a doll made from a soft gray cloth with a wide, black oval nose on its face and little sparkling green glass eyes. The ears were big and puffy, like silver clusters of cotton balls sewn on either side of the doll's head.

  The doll was supposed to be a Woaoo; they'd always made Clarity think of koalas. She wondered if Cassie would like koala pictures and videos too. Clarity and Irohann had visited the Woaoo homeworld only once—it was a beautiful forested planet. The people had been kind, but too deeply religious for Clarity's taste. Their society was rife with complicated, inscrutable rules, always ready to trip an outsider up.

  The plush gray doll in Clarity's hands slumped forward; its belly was soft and squeezable and felt good in her hands. Comforting. She liked to imagine that this little Woaoo had felt constrained on her world too, and Clarity had freed her, taken her on a grand adventure across the universe.

  Like Irohann had done with her.

  Clarity closed her eyes, trying not to start crying again, and squeezed the little Woaoo doll against her chest, trying to pull every scrap of comfort she could out of the little body, merely a scrap of cloth in itself.

  A buzzing sound startled Clarity into opening her eyes, and she saw an orb of tiny insectile bodies wobbling through the air away from her. This was a small fraction of Mazillion—only about fifty bodies, maybe a hundred, in a single hovering clump. The orb fluctuated, stretching and compressing, and the buzzing sound of the insects' fluttering wings resolved into a word, "Follow." Mazillion's mouth repeated the word, over and over, forming a simple chant: "Follow, follow, follow."

  Clarity wondered if there was enough of Mazillion here to understand her if she answered them. "Where? Why?"

  Mazillion's mouth continued to repeat, "Follow." Maybe this was only enough of Mazillion to act as a messenger.

  Clarity tucked her Woaoo doll under one arm and slung the duffle bag back over the other. She followed the buzzing orb of Mazillion, as instructed, out of her room and down the vein-like hallways. As they passed the scullery, Clarity peeked in to see Jeko at one of the tables, holding a fork in her nose, and Am-lei standing beside the bank of udders. The large video screen behind them now showed distant stars and an asteroid field all around instead of static. These asteroids were white and gray, glittering lumps of tight-packed snow and icelike uncut diamonds, and they spread in a wide field across the screen.

  Clarity was about to continue on, following Mazillion down the hallway, when a light flashed, catching her attention and stopping her. She stayed in the open valve of a doorway and watched the screen until the light flashed again. Violet light, dim and dusky, shone between the asteroids as Cassie flew toward the field of ice and snow, tilting the angle, but more than that, the violet light flickered, disappearing and reappearing, flashing like a lighthouse's beam.

  "The pulsar Merlin," Clarity said.

  The pulsar was so small, at first Clarity thought it was still a long way away. But the way the angles shifted told her, this was simply the smallest, dimmest star she'd ever visited. It was a mere shard of light, shining in the darkness of space, barely enough of a star to brighten the ice field around it, never mind actually melting it. There would be no watery life-filled worlds orbiting this piece of purple sun.

  "Follow," Mazillion buzzed insistently, suddenly hovering beside her ear.

  Clarity instinctively swatted at the insects who had gotten too close to her, and her hand struck the buzzing orb of Mazillion's mouth. Most of the tiny insect bodies dispersed and reformed their orb shape a few feet farther down the hall. A few, three she counted, wobbled in the air of the hall beside her.

  Clarity cupped her hands beneath the three injured bodies and let them land on her open palm. One of them had only four legs and a double pair of fluttering translucent wings; the other two had six legs each and triple wings. Their tiny abdomens, barely larger than a pinhead, looked like smoky topaz cabochons and their legs, barely thicker than a pin, were striped black and white. These details were too fine to see from a distance as the bodies swarmed.

  Each of the three bodies on Clarity's palm was injured in some way—a crumpled wing, a leg bending in too many places, or both. "I'm sorry," Clarity whispered into her palm. "I didn't mean to hurt you."

  The orb hovering in the hall buzzed louder, stretched out, the bodies flying farther apart so the overall shape became transparent. The diffuse orb oscillated, stretching into a wide oval and then compressing back into a narrower one. Then the oval split in half; a smaller orb flew away down the hall, bouncing erratically through the air and buzzing loudly. Its buzz sounded angry. The other half, also a smaller orb, flew toward Clarity.

  The half-mouth of Mazillion approached Clarity cautiously this time, flying slowly and steadily until it rested just above her open hands. The swarm of bodies lowered, hovering in the air in front of Clarity, until it brushed her open palm with complicated tickles of wings and legs.

  When the orb lifted and flew away, the three broken bodies were gone from Clarity's palm, taken by the half-mouth. Mazillion's small orb of bodies in the hall in front of her, buzzed, more quietly and less clearly than when there'd been twice as many of them: "Forgiven."

  Then almost before Clarity was sure of what she'd heard, the buzzing voice changed back to the chant, "Follow, follow, follow."

  Clarity didn't hesitate to follow the swarm creature this time, and Mazillion led her through the spiraling maze of vein-like hallways back to Cassie's cockpit.

  The array of screens lining the walls showed the exterior star-scape, littered with icy asteroids, from every angle of Cassie's position. Clarity expected to see Roscoe hooked into the captain's chair with sucker disks attached around the base of his long ears, but the dimple of flesh was empty. Roscoe was nowhere in sight. Only Wisper and a tornado comprising the rest of Mazillion stood inside the ventricle room of the cockpit.

  Wisper was at the computer console in the corner of the bank of screens, typing and watching text and numbers stream over the corner screen. Mazillion swarmed and spun beside her, inscrutable as any true tornado composed of wind and clouds.

  The tiny orb of Mazillion that had led Clarity here rejoined the rest of their body like a dewdrop coalescing into a pool of water.

  "You summoned me?" Clarity said wryly. "Where's Roscoe?"

  "My pilot is scared and hiding," Wisper said, turning away from the computer console built into Cassie's flesh. "My gravity specialist is stubborn. And I am not a good leader."

  Clarity had thought Roscoe was past his fear. Though some fears are too big to work through in a single conversation with a stranger. She sighed. "Well, at least your spaceship is a prodigy. It looks like she brought us here in a single jump. This is the pulsar we're looking for, right?" Clarity gestured at the bank of screens where purple light flickered in every one of them.

  "Yes," Wisper agreed. "She is also young and foolish and nearly killed herself trying to impress a lapine man who won't commune with her."

  "Poor lovelorn Cassie," Clarity said, walking
up to the dimpled captain's chair in the middle of the room. She reached out and touched one of the hanging sucker disks, and as she did, an image of herself flickered into place on the screen in the very middle of the bank of screens. A human woman with green hair, surrounded by screens and screens of flickering purple starlight.

  "He'll come around," Clarity said, feeling the spongey, fungus-like surface of the sucker disk with her fingertips for the first time and thinking about how she'd probably have to let it kiss her forehead again soon. Roscoe better come around, she thought, because if he didn't, she'd be stuck caring for this juvenile spaceship until the end of the world.

  Although the way Wisper told it, the end of the world might be coming quite soon.

  "What do you need me to do?" Clarity asked Wisper.

  "I don't know," Wisper said, tilting her head down at a forlorn angle. "It wasn't supposed to be like this. I assembled my team, and I got us here. But when we fly in closer, I'm..." Wisper turned back toward the bank of screens, watched them for a moment, then began pacing the short length of the cockpit, back and forth, restless and trapped.

  "You're going to die," Clarity said.

  Wisper stopped, suddenly. She looked at Clarity, and the irises constricted, slightly, over her glassy eyes. "I can't die," she said. "My consciousness is spread across the computers of a half dozen Wespirtech extension bases, as well as Wespirtech itself. I'm backed up in triplicate on every site. The Wespirtech scientists could try to extinguish me, and they wouldn't succeed. I've even set up Trojan horse backups on a dozen unrelated space stations. I cannot be killed. I will not die."

  "You will die," Clarity said. "The moment the body you're in—" She pointed at Wisper's blue-and-silver skeletal form, and Wisper laid a metal claw against her barrel-like chest. "—shuts down, you will stop, and it doesn't matter that there's more of you out there to continue on. It still must be terrifying."

  Clarity reached out a hand to the robot, and Wisper stared blankly at her. After a moment, Clarity stepped forward anyway and took one of Wisper's metal claws in her hand. She squeezed gently, warm flesh against cold metal. Her hand didn't usually feel warm, but compared to Wisper's, it was burning with the heat of life.

  Nonetheless, Wisper squeezed back. It took her a moment to respond, but she did squeeze back, gently, careful to not harm Clarity's delicate, flesh-and-blood, human hand.

  "Can you feel that?" Clarity asked.

  "Yes," Wisper answered. "This body has pressure sensors in its hands."

  "You have pressure sensors in your hands. That's your body. It's you."

  "It's not me. I stretch across solar systems."

  "You don't," Clarity insisted. "Not today. Not when we fly into the dead zone that you needed a living ship for. It's okay to be scared."

  "This is why the others won't do what I tell them," Wisper said. "They're scared."

  Clarity didn't answer, but she smiled sadly.

  "This is fear," Wisper said, squeezing Clarity's hand harder. "I've never felt fear before. Concern. Worry. But not fear. Even when my scientists die... Or when I think they might die... I mourn them. I get attached to them. I have preferences and hopes. But I've never faced... the end of myself before. I've never been afraid."

  Over the last week, this frightened robot had ruined every aspect of Clarity's life, left her homeless and fighting with her only friend.

  But Clarity could still feel for Wisper. It was noble that she was willing to die for this mission. It was the best proof Clarity had seen that Wisper was telling the truth about Project Merlin and the Devil's Radio.

  Clarity needed to help destroy Project Merlin to save the universe. "I can't make it less scary for you," Clarity said. "But I will do everything in my power to finish your mission. Tell me everything I need to do, and I will make it happen."

  Wisper let go of Clarity's hand and took a step back. "Do you still have your pocket computer?"

  Clarity hadn't thought about her pocket computer since before she'd had to evacuate The Serendipity, but she patted down her pockets, and there it was. Ready and waiting. She pulled it out and held it up.

  Wisper held out a metal talon, open, waiting to receive the tiny slab of computer. Clarity handed it over, and Wisper began busily typing information in.

  "I thought electronics wouldn't work where we're going," Clarity said.

  "They won't," Wisper said. "This is for after. If your pocket computer is off, then the EM waves won't destroy the information stored on it."

  "Would that..." Clarity could already tell this was going to be a stupid question, but she couldn't help asking it. "...work for you? Turning you off?"

  "No," Wisper said. When she finished typing information into Clarity's pocket computer, the robot powered it down, handed it back, then looked Clarity steadily in the eyes. "My consciousness is too complicated. It's more than coded data. It's an entangled harmonic state in the neural pathways of this electronic brain." She must have seen Clarity's disappointment, because she added, "I'm sorry."

  "You shouldn't have to comfort me," Clarity said, taking her pocket computer back and slipping it into her pocket.

  "I shouldn't have to do any of this," Wisper said. "None of us should. And yet, here we are."

  "Here we are," Clarity agreed.

  To her surprise, her words repeated with a fluttering buzz from Mazillion, "Here we are."

  Wisper gestured at the buzzing tornado and said, "Mazillion knows where to find Project Merlin inside the base and how to turn it off." Then she gestured upward at Cassie's spiraling spikes and hanging sucker disks. "Cassie knows where the base is, and I've told her where to find the Devil's Radio, so you can take the entangled particles back."

  "We have to take Project Merlin to the Devil's Radio?" Clarity asked.

  "It's the only way to destroy it," Wisper confirmed. "Everything else you need to know—everything Am-lei will need to know in order to safely destroy Project Merlin at the Devil's Radio—is in your pocket computer."

  Clarity nodded and patted her pocket, to show she was keeping it safe. "I'll guard it with my life."

  "You'll guard it with the life of the universe," Wisper said. Then she stepped away, turned to look at the bank of screens showing flickering purple light, and hummed, "I'm ready. You should pilot Cassie. Do it now. We shouldn't wait."

  Clarity hesitated. Once she communed with Cassie, and they flew into the electronic dead zone around the Merlin Base, she'd be killing Wisper. She'd never killed anyone before. It tore at her on the inside. This day just kept getting worse. She'd already lost her home, her trust for her friend, and now she had to tear herself apart from the inside. She had to commit murder, or at least, something akin to assisted suicide.

  Clarity felt the lump of her Woaoo doll, still tucked under her arm. "Here," she said, taking the doll and thrusting it into Wisper's metal hands. "Hold this." It might do nothing to make the robot feel better, but somehow, it made Clarity feel better, knowing the cuddly little doll would be in Wisper's hands as she died.

  Clarity climbed into the captain's chair, reached for the hanging sucker disks, and guided them to her temples and the back of her skull, where they kissed down. She didn't dare to hesitate again. She might lose her nerve. But as her mind blended with Cassie's, soothing images of bunnies filled her vision, and she put the idea of a dying, self-sacrificing robot out of mind.

  She had flying to do.

  18 Staring the Universe in the Face

  Clarity and Cassie swooped through the ice field toward a barrel-shaped metal satellite with long rods on either end; dark copper solar panels sprouted off the two long rods like mechanical wings, and Merlin's purple light glinted off the panels, flickering like a strobe. This was Wespirtech's Merlin Base, orbiting tightly around the pulsar, closer than any of the icy asteroids.

  As Cassie approached the base, Clarity experienced a strange sensation—there was a crispness to her shared consciousness with Cassie that fluctuated. The onslaught of
images of bunnies in her mind, something she was simply getting used to when melded to Cassie, let up. Also, all of the internal views of various ventricle rooms inside of Cassie disappeared; Clarity hadn't been thinking about them, but they'd been there, available if she wanted to look. Now, they were gone. For a moment the bunnies were gone too, but they came back. When they came back, though, the pictures were fuzzier, less precise.

  Clarity realized Cassie had been using the computer systems patched into her nervous system to boost her own memory, and possibly her thinking. And now the computers were off, knocked out by invisible, otherwise imperceptible EM waves from the science base. With them, they'd taken the artificial gravity, but fortunately, the fundamental life support systems—air filtration, the sparkles of bioluminescent light in Cassie's walls, and heating—were all generated entirely through biological processes.

  Cassie edged in close to the base, pushing her body right up against the warm metal. Clarity could still see the base, sensing it visually through whatever radio-sonar Cassie's spiraling horn used. Up close, the base's barrel-shaped core was about twice Cassie's size. Clarity hadn't expected the metal to feel warm, but she supposed if anything had been happening inside the base, if there was any of the life support left, if the energy hadn't all leeched away into the surrounding vacuum yet, then it would feel warm compared to the baseline of empty space. At least, to Cassie's touch.

  Clarity felt an inchoate emotional sensation bubbling inside of herself. She closed her human eyes, trying to shut out Cassie's visual sight as well. She tried to focus on the feeling, to understand the emotion Cassie was trying to communicate with her, but it didn't resolve into words this time. Without the computer facilitating and translating for Cassie.

  The starwhal was scared. That was one of the bubbles of feeling, Clarity was sure. I know, honey, Clarity thought words as hard as she could at Cassie, hoping she wasn't doing the equivalent of speaking more loudly to someone who didn't know Solanese. "But as soon as we turn off the Merlin Project, your computers will work again. You'll be able to talk again. I promise."